PHILADELPHIA – The White House has hesitated to cast the midterm elections as a referendum on President Barack Obama, except when it comes to one key constituency: African-American voters.

As Obama has steadily increased his outreach to African American voters over the past month. With interviews and campaign stops targeted at the black community – “our community,” as the president likes to say – he has sent a clear signal that this election is about him and his record.

“Two years ago you defied the conventional wisdom in Washington,” Obama told thousands of screaming supporters Sunday at a campaign rally in a predominantly black area of Philadelphia. “They said, ‘No you can’t.’”

“’No you can’t elect a skinny guy with a funny game to the presidency of the United States,’” he added. “What’d you say?”

His voice hoarse, the president pleaded with the Philadelphia audience to defy Washington conventional wisdom again. Head to your beauty shops and your barber shops, and spread the word, he said. But most of all, he said, head to the polls three weeks from now, even though he is not on the ticket.

“They think, ‘Oh Obama’s name’s not on the ballot, maybe they’re not going to turn out,” he said. “You’ve got to prove them wrong.”

The message echoed the one Obama delivered last week at a historically black college in Maryland. “Don’t make me look bad, now,” he said, urging the mostly African-American audience to vote.

In casting the election in such personal terms to black voters, Obama is making the kind of racial appeal - as understated as it is - that he has been reluctant to do in the past.

It’s unclear if his popularity among African Americans – 91 percent – will transfer to other candidates, particularly white ones, in November. With enthusiasm lagging among Democrats – especially African Americans, who surged to the polls to help elect the first black president in 2008– the appeals of Obama’s coattails are being tested.

“The issue here is that Obama’s popularity among black people was as much a personality cult as it was about the specifics of his political quality,” said John McWhorter, a linguist at the conservative Manhattan Institute. “The task now is to make people understand that it’s equally important for them to come out and vote on behalf of senators and governors…even if they’re not him, even if they’re not black. And that’s a tough one.”

The president’s outreach to the black community is intended to energize voters to turn out in 2010, but it’s also the beginnings of the White House laying the groundwork for re-engaging a key constituency for Obama in 2012.

In addition to the rallies in Maryland and Philadelphia, Obama has spent the past month talking to smaller groups of African American voters at local stops. He’s done half a dozen interviews with black radio hosts – Russ Parr, Tom Joyner, Doug Banks, Michael Baisden, Joe Madison and Warren Valentine – and he’ll do more in coming weeks.

His overall message is the same. “They figured if Obama fails, then we win,” the president said of Republicans on Sunday.

“Am I wrong, Joe?” he added, turning to Vice President Joe Biden, who had introduced Obama and sat on the stage.

But Obama’s us-vs.-them argument goes well beyond Democrats-vs.-Republicans when he makes it to black audiences, and it strikes a much more personal chord.

“I don’t think people fully understand what’s at stake here. We had 10 years of policies that did not help the African-American community, did not help the American economy and led to this disaster,” Obama said last month in an Oval Office interview with Madison on Sirius XM. “Nobody’s been more damaged than the African-American community by that. We’ve got to make sure that we turn out to vote.”

Sometimes Obama’s message is more subliminal.

“From the first days of our nation, every time Americans have tried to bring about real, meaningful change, we faced setbacks and disappointments,” Obama told the crowd in Maryland. “Harriet Tubman had fear and doubt.”

“But as Americans, we have always moved forward,” he added. “And that’s what’s being tested right now.”

Obama isn’t the only one turning Nov. 2 into a referendum on his presidency when speaking to black audiences.

“One of the things I’ve been telling African American voters is, ‘Look, they’ve made this about the president,’” Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell said in an interview. “And if they’re making it a referendum on the president we’ve got to be heard.”

Obama’s reception in Philadelphia, where four in five voters are registered Democrats, was warm. He was backed up by Democratic heavyweights – from Biden to Rendell to Rep. Joe Sestak, the party’s candidate for Senate. Hometown heroes The Roots, who campaigned for Obama in 2008, kicked off the festivities.

“You just don’t vote once for change, you keep fighting for change,” Sestak told the crowd. “We must ensure that this election two years ago doesn’t go wasted.”

But it was clear the thousands of people who’d stood for hours at the event were there for one person: Obama. They chanted his name and cheered wildly as he stepped onto the stage in shirtsleeves. The same was true at last week’s rally in Bowie, Md., where Sheila Key, a student at Bowie State University, said she wouldn’t have turned out for the rally the president headlined for Gov. Martin O’Malley if Obama hadn’t been there.

“Not if I had to make a special trip,” she said.

The question is whether that sentiment will keep black voters home on Nov. 2.

Obama’s renewed outreach to the African American voters hasn’t gone unnoticed among his target audience.

“We haven’t heard from you in a while,” radio host Tom Joyner said to the president at the start of his interview last month.

“You know, I don’t get a chance to do much radio these days,” Obama replied. “But one of the things I mentioned to my team was we’ve got to make sure that we’re not only talking to television, and especially in the African-American community, Tom Joyner and black radio is what people listen to.”

“The president of the United States has called home,” Joyner said before cutting to a commercial break, “and he’s got a deal on how to turn this whole economy around in this country, especially for African-Americans 'cause that’s who he’s talking to this morning.”

Obama insists he's not focused on 2012, but when asked on the Doug Banks show if he thinks he can win again, the president said, "My chances of winning re-election would be much higher than my chances of me winning the presidency the first time around, so I’m somebody who tends to be pretty confident that when I take the message directly to the American people that we can succeed.”

But, he added: “Don’t assume because I’m not on the ballot that this election is less important."

Obama’s personal connection with black voters as the first African-American president often gets lost amid the high-profile disagreements he’s had with the Congressional Black Caucus or the NAACP over the past 20 months.

In July the NAACP, along with a handful of other civil rights groups, wrote a blueprint for education policy that criticized the Obama administration's competitive Race to the Top program as an antiquated and highly politicized frame for distributing education funds. That same day, those civil rights leaders were invited to the White House to meet with Education Secretary Arne Duncan and White House senior advisor Valerie Jarrett to smooth over tensions.

The tension with black lawmakers stirred up last December when the CBC wrote a letter to Obama asking him to pay attention to the disproportionately high unemployment rate among African Americans. The CBC was back March with harsh words for the administration before attending a meeting at the White House on the economy and jobs, and black lawmakers had refused to support Obama’s financial regulatory reform package until it included relief for struggling homeowners.

The president’s open criticism of embattled Rep. Charlie Rangel also put him at odds with the CBC, which has stood squarely behind the Democratic leader as he’s faced ethics charges.

But, as he is with other factions of the Democratic Party – most notably liberals – Obama is trying to get his supporters to look past the compromises and focus on the larger picture. As a result, he sometimes sounds like he’s making a case for the lesser of two evils.

“Now, remember, the other side has a plan, too,” Obama warned last month at the Congressional Black Caucus’ annual dinner. “We need to finish the plan you elected me to put in place. And I need you. I need you because this isn’t going to be easy. And I didn’t promise you easy. I said back on the campaign that change was going to be hard. Sometimes it’s going to be slower than some folks would like. I said sometimes we’d be making some compromises and people would be frustrated.”

Invoking the Civil Rights Movement and emancipation, Obama encouraged “foot soldiers like you, sitting down at lunch counters, standing up for freedom” to do it again for him.

“I need everybody here to go back to your neighborhoods, to go back to your workplaces, to go to churches and go to the barbershops and got to the beauty shops, and tell them we’ve got more work to do,” he said. “Tell them we can’t wait to organize.”

Obama’s argument appears to be hitting home for some. “We know that people have short memories, but they have to remember that Barack Obama didn’t create this problem,” Carolyn Pinkney, an African American voter, said at Obama’s rally in Bowie last week.

“Of course there’s some disenchantment because the president came in with such high expectations levels,” said Rendell. “But on the other hand there’s still a lot of African Americans who say, ‘Hey, he’s not superman and he can’t change everything in 20 months.’”

In his interviews with black radio hosts, Obama tailors his accomplishments to his audience. He explains how health care and financial regulatory reform will benefit African Americans. He argues that Historically Black Colleges and Universities would fare worse under Republicans. And he expresses a gratitude he doesn’t typically offer Democrats on the campaign trail.

“And let me just say one last thing to all your listeners,” Obama told Joyner, “sometimes it may seem like we are just focusing on today it’s Iraq, and tomorrow it’s Iran, and the next day, it’s the financial crisis - this, that and the other.

“But Michelle and I never forget the support and friendship we’ve received from the family on your show, and so just know that we greatly appreciate you guys and love you guys.”